Please open your Bibles now to Acts chapter 1 quickly. Chapter 1. I'll remind you of the thesis here. Verses 1-8. The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which He was taken up after He, through the Holy Spirit, had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen. to whom he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during 40 days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. And being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you have heard from me. For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now. Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons, which the father has put in his own authority. but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria to the end of the earth." So, last time we went through the portion about the witness to Jerusalem, witness in Jerusalem, and we'll be looking at the witness in Judea and Samaria and beginning the section on taking the word out to the end of the earth. Now, the thing that happened last time right as we concluded we look at the first three verses of chapter 8 and those first three verses introduce us to Saul so let's reread those three verses chapter 8 verse 1 now Saul was consenting to his death we're talking about Stephen the martyrdom of Stephen at that time a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem And they all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. And devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison." So we have the persecution there, the introduction of Saul. What we'll be looking at today is we'll be looking from chapter 8 up through chapter 14, and that breaks right before the Council at Jerusalem. And so it allows us to deal with sort of this beginning of the New Covenant era. So we have the New Covenant era, the transition in Jerusalem, the New Covenant era in terms of dealing with Samaritans and Jews, and the difficulties there. And then we have the initial Gentile Cornelius, his household, and then we have the Gentile Church of Antioch in Syria, the Syrian Antioch. And then we start to see some of that first missionary trip, the first missionary journey where Barnabas and Paul are sent off. And so we're going to look at that kind of beginning to come in and the way that that escalates the conflict. It creates more and more difficulty around how do we deal with the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, and how do we deal with Jews and Gentiles. And so Acts 15 will kind of be the height of that conflict. And so we'll go there. And that really is where I think the book deals with that conflict in its kind of heightened form. So this is all preparatory for it. Now, Chapter 8. So we've seen that Saul is beginning to persecute, but we also saw that everybody except for the apostles scattered. So what happens in verse 4, chapter 8 verse 4, those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word. Then we have the example of Philip going down to Samaria and preaching Christ there. Now Philip is an evangelist, is normally how he's talked about, but we have been introduced to him as a deacon. And in addition to that, we've also been told just a second ago that the apostles were not sent out, that everybody else was scattered, and everybody else was preaching the gospel. And so the idea of the duty of evangelism for all believers is presented here. The reality that there is a duty of all believers to preach an ordinary life, to speak the truth, and people will try to make much of specific words in terms of which of them are from the public assembly versus not. I don't think that that's a legitimate distinction here. The activity is something that is the same activity inside of the church assembly or outside of it, but all that to say everybody should be a believer and every believer should be an evangelist in the little e sense. You should all be spreading the gospel. So we have Philip, and Philip is going around, he's preaching, goes to Samaria, The Samaritans, as you may recall, were enemies of the Jews. The Jews considered them to be sort of fake Jews. They were circumcised and doing idolatry that was not in alignment with what was instituted by God. It was false worship, idolatry. And so they viewed them as having polluted the Jewish religion. They had a false temple and things like that. And Jesus tells us in John chapter 4 that the Jews are right about where the temple is, not the Samaritans, right? Clearly, the Samaritans are wrong there. So the question when there's this bringing in of Samaritans is, what do they need to do? How do they repent of that? And so they're baptized. They're brought in. And so it kind of takes these people who are pseudo-Jews or halfway Jews, and they're brought into the church by baptism. Now, they're already circumcised. So this question of circumcision kind of gets looked over. But this is really the first Gentile church. these samaritans that are being brought in uh... but oftentimes the church in antioch is what's talked about because they're not samaritans they're not circumcised the issue is kind of not dealt with to some extent until then so we have the preaching of christ in samaria uh... and from here uh... philip does miracles uh... there's healing uh... and so he's also casting out demons And so we have this healing, the removing of the unclean spirits in this unclean place with the sign miracles and the preaching of the word. And so these are the same things that we've seen over and over again from the apostles. Now, it says in verse 8, there was great joy in the city. And so this great joy, they're receiving the word with joy. We're introduced then to Simon the sorcerer. And there's a statement here about lots of people getting baptized, the continuing process of baptism, so the church is continuing to grow there. Simon said to have believed. He's amazed by the miracles and signs. Then we, in the section with verses 14 up to about verse 25, We have this issue where we have the sin of Simony, right? The name comes from Simon. And that's the idea of offering money for a gift of the Holy Spirit. And so Peter rebukes him. And then we talked about the dispute about is Simon saved or is he not saved? The main point, and that's an interesting controversy that by itself is relatively irrelevant. because of the fact that the point is you don't offer money for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. That's the sin that's being condemned. And so we recognize that what we need to do is we need to pray. We put our money to service of God. We don't try to make God our servant with money. And so that's the principle thing here. And we have that rebuking that occurs. So we have the Apostle Peter coming there, and there is this receiving of the Holy Spirit that occurs that is the event that causes Simon to basically say, well, I'd like to get some of that. And so the coming of the Holy Spirit unto the Samaritans, we have this kind of second event, this being baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And in verse 17, then they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. So you can think back to Pentecost, right? They're receiving the Holy Spirit, receiving power. Here we have receiving of the Spirit in terms of receiving power. And that's what's occurring, and that's happening with Samaritans. Now, Philip, there's an angel of the Lord that comes to Philip. He's in the midst of all this excitement in Samaria, and he is told to go out to this basically desert place, wilderness, where there's nobody. except he runs across an Ethiopian eunuch. This Ethiopian eunuch is reading the book of Isaiah, and he just happens to be at Isaiah 53, verses 7 and 8. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before his shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation, his justice was taken away. And who will declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth. And so, Philip runs up to this chariot that the Ethiopian is on and says, do you understand what you're reading? And basically, the The eunuch responds by saying, you know, how will I know unless somebody helps me to interpret it? And by the way, is this guy talking about himself or is he talking about another man? And then Philip jumps all over that and starts talking through how from this scripture, Jesus is taught. And so going through that, we have the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch. And so this is an irregular baptism. And this irregular baptism is very important. Baptism ordinarily occurs in the public assembly. And you would ordinarily have somebody, as they are being baptized, you would have them be examined But in this particular case, you've got a guy who's on his way back out of a necessary duty to his homeland, and this is the opportunity to baptize him. And so this helps to demonstrate irregular baptism, the irregular usage of ordinances that are lawful, but not the ordinary course of things. And similar to the fact that works of necessity and mercy make it so that we can do things that are not the ordinary activities of the Sabbath, At the same time, there are certain events and duties that might require us to do things in an irregular manner for baptism or for ordination, things like that, right? So those are things that are necessary for the ordering of the church, the establishing of the church, and we have those irregular examples. This is an important text. However, it's also widely used by people to just say, well, let's just baptize people willy-nilly, however. And so irregular does not mean Regular. Irregular does not mean regular. So the things that we see as the irregular or rare examples, we should not take them and say, let's make that normative. Let's make that the thing we do all the time. Instead, it should be normative for this sort of situation that we are dealing with where the example is. So we need to look at those. We need to have the general principles. We look for case laws, and we look for proven examples. And we use those in that order, trying to stick with the general rule, using the case laws to understand particular exceptions, looking for approved examples to understand how there might be more details that need to be drawn out. But that is the way to use this text. So this is an important text. We then have the Holy Spirit taking Philip away. going to as it is he passes through a preachers in all the cities till he came to see Syria so then we get the chapter 9 and we're go back to Saul right this has been a nice time not thinking about Saul but here the guy with the black hat comes in again right so we've got Saul he's breathing murder and he is on his way with a letter straight from the Sanhedrin authorizing his persecution of the church. He's on the road to Damascus, heading up there to start persecuting. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ appears to him. There's a bright light. The other people with him can't see Jesus, but there is an awareness of him being there. There's a sound, but they don't hear the words. He's able to hear the specific words, and so he is blinded in this process. And so he is taken to Damascus, and there, where he's unable to care for himself, the Lord sends a man named Ananias. Now you remember Last time we talked about Ananias and Sapphira and we talked about how there was healing and there was holiness and the holiness was displayed by the killing of Ananias and Sapphira when they lied to the Holy Spirit. And so that helped to scare people off. I talked to you about Augustus, sorry, Augustine, not Augustus, Augustine. and the Donatists and the controversy there about the hospital versus the Holy Assembly and how those are not really contradictory, that the Donatists, some of them, abused the holiness principle to keep people out unreasonably. So that was the prior Ananias. Here we have a different Ananias. And we having just talked about an Ananias who lied to the Holy Spirit. Here we have an Ananias who he in obedience to the Lord goes to a man who could easily be his murderer. Right. And so. he has the right fear. Whereas the other Ananias wanted to have the praise of men and did not fear Lord, therefore he had the fear of man. Here we have Ananias who fears God, fears the Lord, and is willing to go put himself at risk to man. So it's an interesting Ananias differentiation there, right? There's two different Ananiases and they display that distinction nicely. So, He heals Saul, puts his hand on him, and Saul receives his sight back. And the result is that Ananias communicates to Saul that he is a chosen vessel, that Saul is a chosen vessel of the Lord, and that he is to go and preach to Gentiles, kings, and the sons of Israel. Gentiles, kings, and the sons of Israel. And so he's primarily, right, he's primarily the missionary or the apostle. He's the apostle to the Gentiles. And we see him preaching to kings, right, along the way. And then he's also looking for every opportunity he can to preach to the sons of Israel. He goes to the Jew first, and then to the Gentile, and then he normally ends up in front of some magistrate because he's arrested, right? So that's his modus operandi. Very good at it. You should strive to be as good at getting arrested as Paul. Now, from there, that gives to us sort of a, that right there is sort of a mission statement for Paul. He's a chosen vessel of the Lord's to bear the Lord's name for Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. So that's Acts 9 verse 15. Okay, Acts 9 verse 15. And so we're gonna see that get played out. So as we saw back early on in Acts 1, I think verse 8, we have that, you know, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, ends of the earth. Here we've got this sort of statement for Paul. Now, verse 19, so when he had received food, he was strengthened. Then Saul spent some days with the disciples at Damascus. He's had his sight restored. He has a meal, typically a good idea if you're not feeling great. And then he spends some time with the disciples. And so what we have during that period of time is we have a strengthening period for Saul. The important thing also to note here, and forgive me, I'm trying to find the verse where it is, but he gets baptized. Well, anyways, it happens here. Let me look for the verse. But basically, we have the restoration of sight, the filling with the Holy Spirit, right, the giving of power. And then, oh, sorry, verse 18. Immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he received his sight at once, and he arose and was baptized. So his quickness to be baptized, he receives the new covenant, the new administration of the covenant, sign of the covenant. And so then from there he goes, he's strengthened using natural means. He's received supernatural means. He's used the ordinary means. Now he's having these natural ordinary means for strengthening. And so he spends time with the disciples at Damascus. Look at verse 20. Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God. So he goes very fast into just preaching the Christ. He's trying to spread this to the Jews. Then all who heard were amazed and said, Is this not he who destroyed those who called on his name in Jerusalem and has come here for that purpose so that he might bring them bound to the chief priests? But Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this Jesus is the Christ." So what we have occurring is he's being restored in his strength. He's being given spiritual strength. He's kind of maturing. We have him, I told you before, this is kind of his young man type of time. There's the children, young men, fathers thing in 1 John with this maturing of people in the faith. And this is him going around slapping people with the broad side of the sword and all that. But he's doing it effectively enough that he's beating them. So he's winning in the amateur leagues here and getting a reputation before he moves into the pro leagues. And so that's what he's going around doing. And we see this strengthening process. At the same time, he's developing his reputation. In the movies, in the books, this is the part that always gets skipped over, okay? But it's important, right? And it's, when I read biographies of great men, I reread and re-listen to the early days more than any other section. It's not as interesting, not as interesting. But the question is, how do you, what do you get through to get to the place where you can get resources and usefulness? And so that's one of the reasons I love thoughts for young men so much. And those are things that are basic to the foundations of living the good life, is avoiding pitfalls and finding the basic training that's necessary. Now, Saul had obviously gone through a life where he'd had tons of training in the scriptures. But, here in his early Christian life, he is going around getting strength, exercising that strength, practicing, and he's building a reputation And so that process of the gradual building of reputation, and the process of gaining people's trust to cooperate, and the process of gaining skill, those things go on for a while. They get you traction. They happen, right? And that's hard work. That's the thing people quit at. They don't like it. It's not fun. But you do not reach the heights of success without going through that. You do not have great influence. You do not accomplish great things. Daring to do great things for God looks like this phase. The amateur league slapping people with the side of the sword and somehow winning. You know, your foot slips and you think you're going to lose. All that stuff. You know, it's just the effort to go in and try before you're great is how you become great. And that brings great glory to God. If you try to steal the glory for yourself, you're going to waste it. But that's what we see here with Saul is this process here where he starts out He starts trying to do his duty, and he's growing a reputation. And he gets rejected, right? Early on, we have him, he goes to Jerusalem, everybody's like, I don't know, who is this guy? He was locking us up. He was going after us. He killed Stephen. And so, he then gets accepted, and he becomes a source of encouragement. We get introduced also to Barnabas earlier on, back in chapter four. He gets reintroduced here in chapter nine. And so, Paul grows, Saul grows in power and reputation, and the church gets encouraged and built up. And so we have verse 31, then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied. Hey, people talk about Alexander, but his father Philip is the one who brought peace to Macedon. He is the one who organized it, had the army in good condition, kept them from having their own constant inner squabbles, and kept them from being afraid of all of their neighbors. And so he left to Alexander an army in good order, a nation in good order, with fields tended to, taxes administered, and therefore Alexander was able to come in and say, great, let's go conquer stuff. All right, so this is Saul's period of doing the Philip type of work, of preparing the place. And so he puts this place in good order, so he's able to then leave on missionary journeys, goes and conquers. And so that work of getting things in good order, that's that important provision work. And so again, let me read that last part, that last sentence there. Verse 31, then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied. All right, so then we get back to Peter, okay? Verse 32, what we have is Aeneas. You remember me talking to you about Aeneas and the Aeneid? And the idea of, I think this guy's name is supposed to remind us of Greek and Roman culture and the fact that it is lame. It is no, it has no power in itself. And so there is this healing that occurs. And then after that, there is Dorcas who is dead and who was resurrected. And so Peter is going here and this resurrection of Dorcas. She was a woman who was full of good works and charitable deeds. And so this work to heal Aeneas and to resurrect Dorcas is sort of a healing of that pagan world and a resurrecting of the Jewish church to be ready to go and be able to conquer And so there is this mutuality here. And that's Augustine's theme of the city of God and the city of man, that the city of man gets taken over and revived. There's a regeneration of the world. There's a living culture. The city of man is replaced by the city of God. The cities of man are dead, and the city of God grows in them. And so there's this taking over of them. So that's a thing that's kind of pointed to here. Then we have Cornelius immediately after, okay? Aeneas healed, Dorcas resurrected, Cornelius, this centurion, and we have Peter being called to go talk to him, and there's this problem of clean and unclean, right? There's the unclean foods and being with Gentiles and those things basically we're told about how that's no longer something to be concerned with. They're not to call them common anymore. They've been made holy. The foods are not unclean anymore. And so, also, the Gentiles are not unclean anymore. They need to be baptized and be ceremonially cleansed in that way. And they need to believe and be baptized in the Holy Spirit and have belief and have gifting power. And so that happens. We have Peter coming in to Cornelius' house. I love Cornelius, as you may recall. And the household that he has and bringing all of his his friends there, he's got his family and everything. He goes, Peter, give us a sermon. And Peter takes advantage of it and gives a good sermon. And so we have Cornelius's house. He is basically the first clearly Gentile person that we're dealing with. So he's often considered the first Gentile convert, although the Samaritans would in some sense be Gentiles. And so we have Cornelius, his household, and the giving of the Holy Spirit, like what happened with the Samaritans and what happened at Pentecost, the giving of the Holy Spirit to them. And so that giving of the Holy Spirit involves gifting, right? Cornelius is already a believer, but he's given gifting with the giving of the Holy Spirit there. And so we have the household and the guests that are there, and then Peter goes home and when he gets home basically the Jewish believers are saying you were eating with Gentiles and so he gives a defense and in giving that defense he explains what has already occurred and it's going to be dealt with in more detail in Acts chapter 15 but this basically comes down to that the you know the old covenant administration is ended there's no longer a need to be circumcised there's no longer kosher distinction there's no longer the temple system the priesthood right those things are ended and so he's explaining that I was told by God to kill and eat these foods that we consider to be unclean and so that is chapter 11 the beginning of that through about verse 18 now verse 18 is a bridge concluding verse when they heard these things they became silent, these people who were opposing Peter, and they glorified God saying, then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life. So they're recognizing, oh, this is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies about the Gentiles. And so there's this question, remember early on, hey, is the kingdom going to be restored to Israel at this time? There's this constant, there's this misunderstanding, this thought that Israel, there's the spiritual Israel, the invisible church, the visible Israel as the church visible, and then there's the national Israel as a ethnic group. And there's this thought that they all three overlap and this need to realize they don't overlap. And in Jesus's ministry, the disciples seem to really get that the invisible church and the visible church are not the same thing. And then in the book of Acts, they really start to get that national Israel and the visible church are not the same thing. But that's the problem, is they keep thinking, oh, the kingdom is here, so that means it's the kingdom for Israel. And so therefore, Israel is going to conquer the nations and the Gentiles will be brought in that way. And they keep getting confounded because, no, the Gentiles are going to be brought in because the kingdom is international. The visible church is international, not just national. and so that international element and they go okay so the gentiles are brought in and the way they're brought in is not by them becoming Jews and so that is the issue that keeps coming up and that gets hammered through here by Peter and the conclusion is everybody goes okay great well so the gentiles are being given repentance to life so then verse nineteen now we go back to Barnabas and Saul Here they are at Antioch. So Barnabas and Saul, verse 19. Now those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but the Jews only. So as we return to Barnabas and Saul, we've just had Peter dealing with this Gentile Jew thing. And now we're going to be dealing with the Gentile Jew thing again with Barnabas and Saul. And so all these believers that are leaving Jerusalem, they're preaching, they're going to synagogues, they're talking to Jews, and they're only talking to the Jews. but verse 20, but some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene who when they had come to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists preaching the Lord Jesus and the hand of the Lord was with them and a great number believed and turned to the Lord. Okay, so these are Greeks. So these people, these believers from Cyprus and Cyrene, they're speaking to Greeks, to Gentiles. And those Gentiles convert. And so all of a sudden There we are with these, you know, believing Gentiles in another place. And this is different, this is separate from what Peter did with Cornelius. And so, moving from just preaching to the Jews, now to the Jews and to the Greeks, there is this situation where Barnabas is thinking, okay, I want to find Saul. I want to find this guy that people have been talking about and work with him. And so he starts to seek him out. And we have Barnabas being reintroduced. He's going as far as Antioch after the persecution. And it says that he's a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. Remember that back earlier, we talked about that language, about the idea of the Holy Spirit being power and faith or wisdom. So there's the doctrine. And a great many people were added to the Lord. Well, Barnabas then leaves and he's looking for Saul. And when he finds him, he brings him to Antioch. And for a whole year, they're meeting with the church and they teach a great many people. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. Now, at the time, what happens then is there at Antioch, an Agabus, who we will run into again in chapter 21, who, you remember, the people who want to argue that there's continuing revelation, they'll say, Agabus gave false revelation, which is bogus. We went over that. This is the same Agabus. So he comes up from Jerusalem, comes to Antioch, and talks about the great famine that's going on. And as a result, The disciples choose, according to their ability, to send relief to the brethren that are in Judea. are sent as gifts, love gifts from one church to the other, to be given to the elders, and they send Barnabas and Saul to do that. So Barnabas and Saul are sent on a mission, they're appointed to do this work, and in being sent to do that, they are appointed for that, and that's, we're going to see that Barnabas and Saul, this is kind of their first out-of-town trip. This is their first mission. Now, everybody loves to think about the great missionary work that's accomplished. And they love to look at Barnabas and Saul and the work that they did in the first missionary journey. But this was their training trip. Early days, again. All the excitement is around the great conquest, the great accomplishments, and all that, but look at the stuff that happens early on, the preparatory work, and that's how you get there. And so they're sent on a lesser journey to work together, and they are able to do that work, and they're entrusted with a lesser mission. It's a mercy ministry mission, and they are sent to do that, and they accomplish that work. Now we zoom back over to Peter, and Peter gets thrown into prison back when we are sorry Peter gets thrown into prison in chapter 12 here and that's because of Herod Agrippa the first and so chapter 12 begins for us we know in chapter 11 at the end of it we're looking at Antioch and the first church among the nations Now in chapter 12 we're dealing with Herod Agrippa and this is really the power of the word up against the power of Herod Agrippa as a representative of the world system. And so Herod Agrippa is, he's killed James, he's killed James, the brother of Jesus, like I hear that is, that's in verse 2, and he has arrested Peter and the believers in chapter 12 are praying that Peter will be released. You remember they are shocked when their prayers are answered, and so they think that Peter's a ghost, and then they realize that he's not, and then they actually believe their prayer has been answered, and so Peter is getting out of town in order to avoid being rearrested, and then We get a little bit further into the chapter, and we have John, whose surname is marked at verse 12. We have the house there where the believers are meeting, and that's where Peter is met when he heads out. So Peter is being searched for by Herod. They want to put him to death, but they can't find him. Then, soon thereafter, verse 20, Herod is at a public meeting, and he's speaking, and the people say, the voice of a god, not of a man, and because he does not rebuke this blasphemy, he is slain by God. He was eaten by worms and died. And it says in verse 24, but the word of God grew and multiplied. So, the power of the world is contrasted with the power of the word there. And we have, shortly thereafter, an attempt to worship Paul and Barnabas, and their response is given in comparison. But so, verse chapter 13, the very end of chapter 12, verse 25, it says, Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem, when they had fulfilled their ministry, and they also took with them John, whose surname was Mark. So, we get introduced to John, whose surname is Mark, in chapter 12. Now, John, Mark, Barnabas, and Paul are working together as a team. They get back to Jerusalem in the beginning of chapter 13. Now, in the church that was at Antioch, there were certain prophets and teachers. Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaan, who had been brought up with Herod, the Tetrarch, and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Now separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then having fasted and prayed and laid hands on them, they sent them away." So here's another sending. And this sending is now the missionary work. So before there was this mercy ministry, now they're being sent on this missionary work. So they go to Cyprus, and from Cyprus they go to Antioch in Pisidia. So they're leaving Antioch in Syria, they go to Cyprus, there's time spent there, and they're landing in modern Turkey. They go into the region of Pamphylia and the region of Pisidia, and Pisidia is where this second Antioch is. And so while they are There, in Pisidian Antioch, there's a famous sermon given, this longer sermon that's given by Paul. And this longer sermon is him kind of going through and giving a defense to the Jews of Christ. And from there, what we end up seeing is there's a a rising conflict that continues to grow. The result of it, for the sake of time, is just that basically Paul gets kicked out. He's expelled from the region. And then in verse 51, they shook off the dust from their feet against them and came to Iconium. So that shaking off of the dust, this is a curse, right? This is a curse. And so they're cursing the place, and we see that they end up coming back on the return journey. But this curse is them saying, okay, so we've been booted out, there's no peace for us, there's no peace for you. Now, after this city in Antioch, and the sermon, and the shaking off, the dust of the feet, we end up seeing Paul move to Lystra, And chapter 14 at verse 11. Now, when the people saw what Paul had done, they raised their voices saying in the Iconian language, the gods have come down to us in likeness of men. That's something pretty similar to what happened with Herod Agrippa. The voice of God, not of a man. Here now, we see Barnabas and Paul being called gods. And so what's the response that they give? Verse 15, and saying, Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men with the same nature as you, and preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God. They deflect that glory away, and try to get men to not worship them, but instead to worship the true and living God. We have that contrast between Herod versus the ministers of Christ versus Paul and Barnabas. Now this time they go Antioch and Pisidia and they go to Iconium and then they go to Lystra and this time in Lystra is where they're dealing with the attempt to worship them and their refusal to receive the worship. The result of undeceiving these people and telling them that they shouldn't worship them is that then the people of Lystra stone them. So Paul gets stoned there, they flee to Derbe, and then from there they continue to go back over the places they came from, verse 21. And when they had preached the gospel to that city, Derbe, and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, that's the city where they got stoned, Iconium, and Antioch. So even though Antioch, they cursed the place, they kicked the dust off their feet, now they're being given opportunity there. And so they're able to preach. And so the curses of God are used to shatter his enemies and to make way for his people. And so we ought not to be afraid to use the imprecatory Psalms, or to use the signs of cursing, like kicking dust off our feet, because we should, and excommunication, because we should realize that God uses them for good, to cause people to come to repentance, to allow opportunity for things, and so those are weapons of our warfare. So they're able to go back and preach there, and then 22, strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, saying, we must, through many tribulations, enter the kingdom of God. So when they had appointed elders in every city and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed. And after they had passed through Pisidia, they came to Pamphylia. Now when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to Italia. From there they sailed to Antioch, this is the Syrian Antioch where they came from originally, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work which they had completed. Now when they had come and gathered the church together, they reported all that God had done with them and that he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. So they stayed there a long time with the disciples. So we kind of leave off at the end of the first missionary journey. We see them planting churches in the nations, and we see this work is, great things are accomplished there, and those are the small beginnings. And we've seen the early mercy ministry trip, followed by the first missionary journey. We saw Paul, even before that first Mercy Ministry trip, kind of in Damascus, just starting to be strengthened, to be gifted more and more by the Holy Spirit, and to be fighting. And so that initial work there is the preparation for this first missionary journey. And we'll see the next two missionary journeys and the rest of this book after that centerpiece here, when we get through Acts 15 next time. We'll be seeing after that the work that is done to further fill the earth with the knowledge of God to have the church spread out. So, are there any comments, questions, or objections from the voting members? Mr. Cordova? At that time, how did Paul gain that knowledge? Was it a supernatural revelation where he was able to now preach the gospel, or was there a few days where he spent where he was stricken blind? Was that a time of intense study and discussion, or was it both? I may have missed that, so I appreciate it. Sure, so the question is, how did Saul gain this knowledge to be able to boldly preach the gospel? So he spent his time in the Old Testament, right, in his youth. He's been trained in that, studied that deeply. He then realizes and is taught by Christ. He's illuminated. So he's going to be, as he's being sanctified, he's going to become more and more aware of kind of the true meaning of much of the Old Testament that previously he read with a veil. Then there's also, there is direct teaching. The Lord Jesus Christ comes to him and teaches him directly. And so we're told that, There's direct teaching there that's a special work that is done by the Lord Jesus with Paul as an apostle born out of due time. There's also the interaction with the brothers in Damascus, and there's Ananias that he interacts with. So we have that. Paul makes much in the book of Galatians of the fact that he was not taught of men, but he was taught by the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I'd want to emphasize that in terms of that. But this early time, I think, would be before much of that, when he first starts to do battle in Damascus and goes into the synagogues to preach. he hasn't gone through a lot of his time of teaching with the Lord Jesus yet. And so that's why I kind of view it as his amateur hour, right, where he's just kind of going, trying to be bold and taking in all that he has. And so by the time he's on his mercy ministry, there will have been a significant time that has passed, and he's able to have learned more. But that's the brief version. Mr. Nye? In chapter 12, verse 2, Herod killed James, the brother of John, with a sword. When you were teaching, you, I believe, mistakenly said James, the brother of Jesus. Oh, forgive me. Yeah, not James, the brother of Jesus. Sorry, James, the brother of John. Forgive me. Thank you for correcting me on that. It's pretty important for Chapter 15, that James, the brother of Jesus, is still alive, since he seems to be the moderator of the synod. Yeah, so that's, I agree. It's important that that not be the James that was killed, so thank you for that. You're welcome. And then one more thing, this is, I think, less of an issue. When, I think this is in, Chapter 11, verse 22, about Barabbas being sent to go get Paul, or go get Saul. It's referred to as Saul still here. I might have misunderstood, but it seemed like you were indicating that that Barnabas had not known about Saul, or he had heard about Saul, but not met him. But he did, in Jerusalem, he did, in chapter 9, when Paul went to Jerusalem after he had subverted, Barnabas was the one who was kind of like an intercessor. between him and the disciples who were afraid of Saul. So, I might have misunderstood, but I just wanted to point that out back. By chapter 11, Barnabas had already met Saul. Thank you. So, the clarification that was offered by Mr. Nye was that Barnabas and Saul met back in Acts chapter 9. and not in Acts chapter 11. And if I said that, then I am certainly wrong. If I was just unclear, thank you for clarifying. Yeah, so just forgive me, I don't remember. I was trying to navigate through a lot of material and could easily have messed that up in my mind in terms of that. So I might well have said that, I'm not sure. So. You didn't say, you didn't say it specifically, you just said Barnabas had heard all these things about Saul and really, like, who is this guy really wanna, yeah, really wanting to, I guess, find out about him. So, yeah. Yeah, I meant to talk about that. I think the part you just went over, I meant to talk about that back before talking about Aeneas. So I think I skipped that in my notes, so forgive me navigating. I've got notes on my Bible and notes on there, and I think I just skipped over that section. But what I wanted to say was that after Saul has his kind of time as an amateur preacher and apologist going around. There's a plot to kill him and he has to escape being let down in a large basket. And so then he goes to Jerusalem. I think I skipped over this entirely. So forgive me. This was me just a mistake. They're trying to rush through. He makes it back to Jerusalem. Barnabas does serve to go between and it's important that that's the case because earlier on he's helping to bridge between the old administration and new administration being a Levite and helping to we see him as just before the presentation of the diaconate, right? he takes his money, you remember he gives his money to the apostles rather than to the temple, and is that to give mercy ministry. And then he seems to be a guy who's getting it early. And so from there he's also getting it that this Saul seems to be important and is trying to reconnect them, connect them to the rest of the church. So that intermediary work is important and And that leads to the time that he is going and disputing with the Hellenists. No, I'm sorry, that's Paul. So that connection there to these Greeks, again, having to do with the Gentiles, Barnabas is early on supporting Paul's work to bring in the Gentiles. So he's an important bridge, he's getting stuff early. So anyways, forgive me, I skipped over that. And thank you for pointing it out. So that's back in chapter nine. Okay, great. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you bless the preaching of your word, that you'd help us to have the book of Acts well in our minds as we are going through it here, and remind us much of what we have gone through in more detail, and we ask that you would cause us to be able to leave the two years that we've spent in this book with much profit from it. And we ask that you would help us to see that the new covenant, the new administration of the covenant is rightly ordered here in our local church and to see ourselves as connected back to the ancient church all the way into the time of Adam. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.